The Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. plans to start its new semester on Jan. 5 with in-person learning for elementary schools and a hybrid model for secondary schools.
BCSC announced its plans Tuesday evening via a public statement on its website.
The hybrid learning model, as approved by the school board in October, splits students into two groups by last name. Secondary students with surnames A-K will attend in person on Monday and Tuesday and do eLearning Wednesday through Friday. Secondary students L-Z will do eLearning Monday through Wednesday and attend in person Thursday and Friday.
Superintendent Jim Roberts said that both elementary and secondary students will have the option to do remote learning five days a week.
At a recent school board meeting, he said that enrollment forms for the school corporation’s BRIDGE remote learning option were recently sent out to parents of elementary school students. Elementary school parents, if they enrolled their students in BRIDGE, were asked to commit to doing so “for all of the third nine weeks.”
“We’re wanting people to commit to that,” Roberts said. “It’s hard to make staffing decisions if that number is constantly moving back and forth.”
BCSC began the school year on Aug. 10 with the option of in-person learning, but moved back to districtwide eLearning on Nov. 9. In their announcement regarding the change, BCSC cited rising community spread indicators and the effect of positive cases and close contacts on staffing. Roberts said at the time that the hybrid model did not address these staffing issues, as it requires the same number of staff members to be present in buildings.
While BCSC had hoped to return to offering in-person learning after Thanksgiving, it later announced that eLearning would continue through winter break, with a possible return to in-person on Jan. 5.
The school corporation has continued to offer some in-person services for students, including, but not limited to, special education, C4 classes, iCare and internet access.
Roberts said he could not give an estimate for how long secondary students would be doing hybrid learning, but did say that it would be for at least two weeks, as BCSC doesn’t want to “bounce back and forth between models” too quickly. He said that he hopes they don’t have to use the hybrid model for long.
“We’ll stay on that path until something indicates we need to pivot away from it,” Roberts said. “The rationale for doing hybrid in the secondary and not the elementary level is just part of a phase-in to eventually get everybody back.”
Roberts cited “physical distancing” as the main reason that secondary schools will be doing hybrid learning. He said that these school buildings have the biggest challenges in regards to distancing and have seen positive cases that led to a “large number of close contacts.”
“By physically distancing appropriately secondary students, we cut down on the risk of any spread of COVID-19,” he said. “And if we do have a positive case, we drastically reduce the number of individuals who will have to miss school or stay at home because of being close contacts.”
Roberts said that BCSC will examine information from local and state health officials, as well as local data, as it moves forward.
BCSC’s official statement said, “During our Winter Break, we will continue to evaluate our situation with a daily review of both community and internal COVID-19 related data and ongoing discussions with our local medical professionals (from both the Bartholomew County Health Department and Columbus Regional Health). We will also provide any additional communication as necessary.”
BCSC’s public statement can be viewed at bcscschools.org.
